Continuation Part 5: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[acbytesla]

.
Great insights and questions RW, in all your posts, not just this one.

Like you said, how did the police know it was the lawyer's laptop? Was it the Milan police or the Perugian police that figured that out?

Rudy was obviously using the computer, since he had his own screensaver installed. The only way he could do that would be to either log into the computer using the lawyer's password, or wipe the hard drive and re-install a new operating system.

If he wiped the hard drive, what remained to ID the computer?

If he used the lawyer's password, how did he know it? May he can guess passwords just like the Postal Police.
.

If the lawyers reported the break in they probably reported the serial number of the laptop. If the police are on top of things they record that data in the stolen items database quickly. The Milan police look in the database and Voila, there it is.

You're assuming the lawyer set up a password. You would think he would but you'd be surprised at how often people don't. You'd also be surprised at some of the passwords people use. 1234 and the word password for example are common. There are countless other obvious ones that are used all the time. I've worked in the computer industry for more than thirty years and I'd just say it is the last couple of years where people have started to get more password savvy.

 

[Grinder]

deleted - dupe

 

[Grinder]

I think you are noting the extremely rare exceptions and not the rule. Where are any of the suspects clothes worn during the murder or the knife that killed Meredith?

Where are the shoes that Rudy wore that made all those shoe prints? You know, the ones they first thought were Raffaele's because they can't count?

Rudy disposes of the shoes, but the moron left the box they came in in his closet!!!

He disposed of them in Germany.

Unless there is a significant lead to where the item is, it's not that likely or common as you are making it out to be. You do hear about the cases where they are found, but you're not counting the thousands and thousands of cases where they don't. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. It can be done....sometimes. Sure they check the garbage cans within maybe a block or 2 from the crime scene or the person's home or workplace, but beyond that it's just plain dumb luck.

Guess I'm not the expert on this that you are. Rudi didn't dump his shoes in Perugia but what did he know? This was not a case where they would have had much time or freedom to get rid of stuff but if you say that the police rarely find a murder weapon it must be true.

If Amanda and Raffaele had really been involved, they would have never just hung around Perugia. They would have went to Gubbio. Meredith's body probably isn't discovered for another 6 hours or even another day or two. If they had been involved, there wouldn't have been a trace. Except at the murder scene.

Now you're preaching to the choir but we know they didn't go to Gubbio so their best option was to clean the knife and put it in the drawer. Certainly the assertion that no murderer would ever do that therefore they must be guilty is a weak point.

 

[acbytesla]

He disposed of them in Germany.

Guess I'm not the expert on this that you are. Rudi didn't dump his shoes in Perugia but what did he know? This was not a case where they would have had much time or freedom to get rid of stuff but if you say that the police rarely find a murder weapon it must be true.



Now you're preaching to the choir but we know they didn't go to Gubbio so their best option was to clean the knife and put it in the drawer. Certainly the assertion that no murderer would ever do that therefore they must be guilty is a weak point.

I'm not an expert Grinder, not by a longshot, and I've been wrong on lots of things on this forum, you have personally and rightfully pointed out some of my mistakes. I'm like you an interested amateur with my own opinion. We are both just trying to drill down on little things and we both are probably full of it.

I do believe that there are countless unsolved murders and while I don't know conclusively, I'd bet that finding the murder weapon that has been dumped is the rare exception, but who really knows? I'm not even sure how to look that up. For some reason, I'd imagine that guns that are dumped are found more often than knives and attributed to the crime than knives. Guns are serialized and then there is the ballistics evidence.

I did take some criminology cases when I was attending the U. One of classes was taught by Bob Keppel, one of the detectives that worked for decades on the Ted Bundy and Green River Killer cases. That class gave me the heebee geebees. Keppel discussed the details of countless serial murders and talked about what was common and what was unique about each one. John Wayne Gacy, was particularly disturbing, I had nightmares about that guy.

Two things led to Rudy being pinpointed to this murder and one most of all, his disappearance. Rudy stays calm and doesn't bug out, They may never have really thought of him and end up checking his palm print that was on file, which is the other thing.

 

[Grinder]

I do believe that there are countless unsolved murders and while I don't know conclusively, I'd bet that finding the murder weapon that has been dumped is the rare exception, but who really knows? I'm not even sure how to look that up. For some reason, I'd imagine that guns that are dumped are found more often than knives and attributed to the crime than knives. Guns are serialized and then there is the ballistics evidence.

I'm positive there are many unsolved murders. Finding a dumped weapon would depend on circumstances. A hit man dropping a gun in a lake or a river probably has no worries. A kid dropping the knife in a nearby garbage can had better worry.

Two things led to Rudy being pinpointed to this murder and one most of all, his disappearance. Rudy stays calm and doesn't bug out, They may never have really thought of him and end up checking his palm print that was on file, which is the other thing.

I doubt that Rudi having known Meredith would have escaped detection. I thought they matched the palm print to his alien resident card but it's been a while.

 

[codyjuneau]

One date is missing here. The nursery school was robbed twice. The first time several thousand Euros were taken. What are the chances that was also RG? And he returned to see if they were stupid enough to keep more cash there (they were not) That story is somewhere. and should have a date on it.

.
And you would think the police would try to find out if it was Rudy that stole the several thousand Euros. Did they interrogate Rudy? Is there a recording of the interrogation?
.

 

[acbytesla]

I'm positive there are many unsolved murders. Finding a dumped weapon would depend on circumstances. A hit man dropping a gun in a lake or a river probably has no worries. A kid dropping the knife in a nearby garbage can had better worry.

I agree, if I did something like this. I'd dump the clothes in one place and the knife a long ways away from the clothes.

Say hypothetically they killed Meredith...(it goes without saying that I don't believe this) They throw the clothes in a plastic garbage bag and take Raffaele's car and just stop at a park or a few fields or woods and it's all gone. A couple of hours at most. And you go to Gubbio and wait for the call.

I doubt that Rudi having known Meredith would have escaped detection. I thought they matched the palm print to his alien resident card but it's been a while.

That is exactly how I've read how they did it. It wasn't in a database. But Rudy didn't really know Meredith that anyone can conclusively say. She knows Rudy about the same as Amanda...barely. Even Giaccomo doesn't know his name. Just the Baron. ...no, now that I think about it, maybe not. They must have asked around who "the Baron" was and found out it was Rudy. The fact that he disappeared made him suspicious...so then they check. If he is just one guy she met in passing out of lots of people...well then I'm not sure they check his palm print on file. If they are following the idea that it was a date rape kind of thing and there was some evidence that an African was involved, then yes, but why check this one guy's records as opposed to countless other people?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA article in a Canadian magazine targeted toward lawyers

In 2011 James Careless ("DNA An Imprecise Science") wrote, "In 2003, Italian DNA evidence implicated an English bartender, Peter Hamkin, in the murder of Annalisa Vincenti, who had been killed in Tuscany the summer before. Based on that evidence, Hamkin was arrested in Liverpool, even though he had never been to Italy and had dozens of witnesses attesting to his whereabouts in England when the crime occurred. But Hamkin’s DNA was available in international police records, due to a drunk-driving conviction in 2001. Despite the wealth of contradictory human and documentary evidence, the DNA test prevailed — until a second DNA test cleared Hamkin before his extradition hearing began."

Mr. Careless also wrote, "And what about defence lawyers? 'Defence attorneys must make sure they get the whole DNA file during disclosure,' says Dr. [John] Waye. 'Moreover, they need to get the help of qualified DNA experts to go over these tests, to look for flaws and shortcomings.'"

 

[Chris_Halkides]

storm drain

So you admit that they disposed of their bloody clothes? Case closed, guilty!

Chris less of a response than I would expect from you. Where would you suggest that they could have disposed of their clothes, shoes and cleaning tools?

My reply was not meant to be taken literally. However thanks to this discussion, I do see that the disposal might be trickier than I thought. I would throw the knife down a storm drain, maybe the clothes also.

 

[Grinder]

My reply was not meant to be taken literally. However thanks to this discussion, I do see that the disposal might be trickier than I thought. I would throw the knife down a storm drain, maybe the clothes also.

...and pray for heavy rain

 

[RandyN]

!!!

Jokes about balls are funny but had I inferred that Knoxs boobs would have made parallel drags marks in the bleach smear then....oh no male chauvinist pig?

Im just teasing... First her boobs are too small and we are just guessing about RS nuts...;-)

There is the tension gone now?

Sad stupid baseless case can get damn depressing at times.

 

[RandyN]

Not at all. Some forensic points are better than others, that's all. There are monster reasons why the knife is not the murder weapon and there are some not so good ones. What do you want, that someone makes a weak point and everyone else claps and cheers? Harsh reality intrudes on that idea.


And yet that is how it has been treated in all the hearings so far, as a serious piece of evidence, and by both prosecution and defence. Don't get me wrong, I am on the extreme wing of the party in believing the knife is the product of corruption, but that's a hard and risky case to make and if there is a bunch of good points short of that that knock the knife out then great, just winnow out the lousy ones, like Hellman's about the improbability of them using the knife to cut bread or acbytesla's idea that no one was ever killed with two knives before.

Why winnow out any points? Start at the unlikely police intuition at its discovery, take it thru its unlinked chain of custody, add a dash of Stefanoni lies about quantification at prelim, add the non compatibility to the wounds, plus the incredible mismatch with the blood imprinted murder weapon marked on the sheets, mock the very non science used to discover the LTN DNA sample of Kercher which could be nothing at all and it should be enough to knock it out of the case...except that the defense ....lousy, lazy, incompetents that they are allow this and many other items or situations to remain alive rather than proving them for the stupid almost insane pieces of crap non evidence that they are.

Dont get me started about the severe lack of ability of the defense. They fail to paint any pictures about the possible links of corruption in this case...Knox is hit for example...and just so happens that this one interrogation is not recorded? Do they point that out? No. Do they mention that every other interaction is recorded? No. Do they mention the fact that Mignini had 30 thousand plus phone calls of RS family wire tapped? No.

Spineless cowards far out of their depth. The defense is responsible for not discrediting this knife at least by now. Ask Stefanoni on the stand if she claimed the quantification of this LTN sample was several hundred picograms at the prelim. And no matter what she answers then hammer the hell out of her...she deserves it and so do the defendants. She either is a liar or a forgetful fool...and in either case she should be discredited for being misleading to the court. But the defense sits on their hands....rotten useless pieces of crap far out of their depth.

Meanwhile Mignini makes twenty unprovable points and the confusion somehow later allows the false evidence to become real. Like the SC ruling that Hellmann failed to consider the sex game gone wrong or whatever the hell that insanity was about. Might as well have been about the truthers of 911.

 

[RandyN]

Good points and not just the ones agreeing with me. Defense strategy is at the heart of the knife taken home argument. It doesn't win and looks desperate.

For those that want to conflate using a knife at home that has killed with cannibalism, risk giving the jury a choice that the defense doesn't need to offer and having them say that they are cannibals.

The defense this round needs to focus on the major points that are the strongest. Throwing out these are good kids that had no motive and would never have returned the knife to the apartment doesn't work.

Btw, just because a knife wasn't disposed of doesn't mean that people used it.

Yea except for that inconvenient starch sample found on the blade by C&V which was somehow missed by Lab tech Stefanoni. That would appear to indicate the knife was used to cut ohhh bread perhaps.

 

[RandyN]

Now your being funny, right?



I don't think it was the murder weapon as stated here many many times. If it is impossible, I'm sure the new court will rule that way as Hellmann did, or did he?

The contraction is you're. haha.

 

[anglolawyer]

Why winnow out any points? Start at the unlikely police intuition at its discovery, take it thru its unlinked chain of custody, add a dash of Stefanoni lies about quantification at prelim, add the non compatibility to the wounds, plus the incredible mismatch with the blood imprinted murder weapon marked on the sheets, mock the very non science used to discover the LTN DNA sample of Kercher which could be nothing at all and it should be enough to knock it out of the case...except that the defense ....lousy, lazy, incompetents that they are allow this and many other items or situations to remain alive rather than proving them for the stupid almost insane pieces of crap non evidence that they are.

Dont get me started about the severe lack of ability of the defense. They fail to paint any pictures about the possible links of corruption in this case...Knox is hit for example...and just so happens that this one interrogation is not recorded? Do they point that out? No. Do they mention that every other interaction is recorded? No. Do they mention the fact that Mignini had 30 thousand plus phone calls of RS family wire tapped? No.

Spineless cowards far out of their depth. The defense is responsible for not discrediting this knife at least by now. Ask Stefanoni on the stand if she claimed the quantification of this LTN sample was several hundred picograms at the prelim. And no matter what she answers then hammer the hell out of her...she deserves it and so do the defendants. She either is a liar or a forgetful fool...and in either case she should be discredited for being misleading to the court. But the defense sits on their hands....rotten useless pieces of crap far out of their depth.

Meanwhile Mignini makes twenty unprovable points and the confusion somehow later allows the false evidence to become real. Like the SC ruling that Hellmann failed to consider the sex game gone wrong or whatever the hell that insanity was about. Might as well have been about the truthers of 911.

Well, on reflection, I don't think I would call the improbability of using the knife to cook a bad point. It appealed to Hellman after all. Rank bad points should not be advanced because they give the other side a chance to score points and look good.

Your critique of the defence lawyers is ill-informed IMO. We don't have the full picture although, it must be said, Raffaele is not overly complimentary in his book. It's easy to be critical but when you see what they were/are up against (Massei, Micheli, Matteini, the SC ... ) it's a near impossible job. If Hellman had tried the first instance case and produced the same motivation things would look different.

 

[RandyN]

No it hasn't. Don't mischaracterise the argument. The meme in question is that only a Jeffrey Dahmer-like psychotic nut would preserve the knife and use it for cooking. That's your meme.

No one, despite request, has come up with a safe and solid plan for disposal of the knife (assuming it was used at all, of course) .

Ahh not true...I gave two.

Drive it out to Lake Narducci and toss it...although that would not be my choice...even though the prolonged submersion would certainly destroy all DNA including any capillary actioned DNA that may have been drawn up into the handle space. That would make it just a knife...rather common, cheap, non identifiable knife that some diver may or may not find.

I would open a small hole in the ground and slip it into this tiny slice in the earth...I may even use the very knife to slice into the ground...

I bet I can give you exact coordinates of the corners of a square mile area and you will never find this knife. Forget that it could be in a thousand sq mile area... and it would still be a normal impossibly clean knife that never had any MK DNA on it in the first place...

Sure criminals keep valuable guns ....stupid criminals that is.

 

[RWVBWL]

Boston vs Perugia

1 of my sisters has a huge, I mean huge DVD collection. She+her old man work for 1 of The Studies here in town,
they get 'em cheaper it seems...

Anyways, as I spend many hours at the beach trying to observe the local wildlife,
I get burnt out often and will take a few hour break+pop in a DVD.
I've been going thru their "B"s collection, grab a few without readin' the story line and plop 'em in+play.

I recently watched a movie called "Boys Don't Cry". Saw another 1 called "The Black Dahlia".
Kinda suprised me to find out the chick starrin' in both was the same,
this chick is some actress. I'm impressed abit, even though I don't really care to follow "Hollywood".(*)
I noticed she went out surfin' a few days ago, so I got to shoot some surfpix of this dame in the waters of L.A.
with a big smile on her face as she caught a couple, cool...


I kinda dig the older flicks,
the cars, clothes, etc. are the real deal, not some newer version of what it was supposed to be like back then.
I have recently also watched an old flick from The '60's called
"The Boston Strangler". Horrible, tragic story, case never officially solved...

Anyways,
just a moment ago,
I read that The Boston Strangler case has reportedly been solved!
Here's a snippet and a link to the story,
the hiliting is obviously mine:

The strangler's last victim would be 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, strangled with her own stocking in her Beacon Hill apartment on tony Charles Street. She was also sexually savaged.

Her killer left behind seminal fluids that were lifted from a maroon blanket her body was covered with. That remains the only DNA evidence in the entire Boston Strangler investigation: six samples that the Boston Police Crime Lab's lead forensic scientist Robert Hayes preserved as he waited for technology to advance to the point where nuclear DNA could be positively matched to a suspect.

First, police had to make sure the Y-chromosomes in those DNA samples were a familial match to DeSalvo in order to convince a judge to let investigators disturb his grave. So BPD Sgt. Brian Albert, a surveillance expert, followed nephew Tim DeSalvo to his worksite in Boston and retrieved a water bottle he drank from and left behind. It was a match to the samples collected in the 1964 Beacon Hill murder, excluding 99.9 percent of the male population from suspicion in Mary Sullivan's killing, Hayes said, and pointing to Albert DeSalvo with near certainty as the man responsible.

Link:
http://gma.yahoo.com/boston-strangler-case-solved-50-years-later-183059057--abc-news-topstories.html


But I wonder still of something:
Are the authorities in Perugia, Italy EVER gonna test a possible semen stainfound on a pillow that was found placed underneath Miss Meredith Kercher's dead, naked body, between her legs?


If they do so though,
I hope that they do a better job testing the DNA sample found in Miss Kercher's bedroom
than they did in this shocking story that Halides1 posted earlier:

In 2011 James Careless ("DNA An Imprecise Science") wrote, "In 2003, Italian DNA evidence implicated an English bartender, Peter Hamkin, in the murder of Annalisa Vincenti, who had been killed in Tuscany the summer before. Based on that evidence, Hamkin was arrested in Liverpool, even though he had never been to Italy and had dozens of witnesses attesting to his whereabouts in England when the crime occurred. But Hamkin’s DNA was available in international police records, due to a drunk-driving conviction in 2001. Despite the wealth of contradictory human and documentary evidence, the DNA test prevailed — until a second DNA test cleared Hamkin before his extradition hearing began."

Mr. Careless also wrote, "And what about defence lawyers? 'Defence attorneys must make sure they get the whole DNA file during disclosure,' says Dr. [John] Waye. 'Moreover, they need to get the help of qualified DNA experts to go over these tests, to look for flaws and shortcomings.'"

(*) For the regular "crew"
Esh, my last significent "girlfriend" has a sis named Juliett Lewis,
I'd never even heard of her, + my lil' sis' laughed at that, hahaha...

 

[Mary_H]

Ahh not true...I gave two.

Drive it out to Lake Narducci and toss it...although that would not be my choice...even though the prolonged submersion would certainly destroy all DNA including any capillary actioned DNA that may have been drawn up into the handle space. That would make it just a knife...rather common, cheap, non identifiable knife that some diver may or may not find.

I would open a small hole in the ground and slip it into this tiny slice in the earth...I may even use the very knife to slice into the ground...

I bet I can give you exact coordinates of the corners of a square mile area and you will never find this knife. Forget that it could be in a thousand sq mile area... and it would still be a normal impossibly clean knife that never had any MK DNA on it in the first place...

Sure criminals keep valuable guns ....stupid criminals that is.

I agree, Randy. I often wish I had something to hide, because I can think of some dang good hiding places where no one would ever find what I put there.

 

[Mary_H]

Well, on reflection, I don't think I would call the improbability of using the knife to cook a bad point. It appealed to Hellman after all. Rank bad points should not be advanced because they give the other side a chance to score points and look good.

Your critique of the defence lawyers is ill-informed IMO. We don't have the full picture although, it must be said, Raffaele is not overly complimentary in his book. It's easy to be critical but when you see what they were/are up against (Massei, Micheli, Matteini, the SC ... ) it's a near impossible job. If Hellman had tried the first instance case and produced the same motivation things would look different.

Well, I agree with Randy on this one, too. I guess it's because the Italians are just beginning to get their feet wet in the adversarial system, but their cross-examinations stink.

 

[JREF2010]

He disposed of them in Germany.



Guess I'm not the expert on this that you are. Rudi didn't dump his shoes in Perugia but what did he know? This was not a case where they would have had much time or freedom to get rid of stuff but if you say that the police rarely find a murder weapon it must be true.



Now you're preaching to the choir but we know they didn't go to Gubbio so their best option was to clean the knife and put it in the drawer. Certainly the assertion that no murderer would ever do that therefore they must be guilty is a weak point.

the never ending Rudy Guede "liars game".......

who knows if he dumped them in Perugia or Germany or Sweden or Bangkok ?
we assume Rudy is telling the truth he left them in Germany?
He admitted to this, so we give him some benefit of the doubt.

A typical liar, who then tells the truth AFTER he is busted. Did his lawyer encourage Rudy to own up on the shoes? or was it another Rudy partial-truth?

I don't know how the police and courts get through the investigations at times, we assume someone like Rudy is credible sometimes and not other times!
How do you deal with someone like Rudy Guede?